For as long as I can remember Comcast/xfinity reported the location of my IP address as being in a nearby suburb (I live in suburban Chicago).
Suddenly, for the past week or so it has reported it as being in Indianapolis Indiana. This prevents me from using an Illinois website that is only open to people in the state and also forces going through the minor, but mildly annolying, process of setting the location when I'm accessing a web site that is location specific. Such as findint the closest store for a retail chain.
Is there any explanation for this and is there any way I can control this setting at all?
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I had the digital adapters for some time for TVs I seldom used while I had cable boxes on our main viewing TVs..
Breif history: Years ago I was able to receive quite a few comcast channels on a regular TV tuner without any cable box by hooking up a cable to the atenna inputs on my TV.. Several years ago Comcast went all digitial and stopped including the ability to do this and at that time offered an adapter box at no charge to us. We used those to hook up a couple seldom used TV's in the house. After a couple years they started charging a couple dollars for the adaper boxes which eventually was increased to about $6, or 2/3 the cost of a regular cable box. At that time we got rid of the adaptors and either stopped using the TV's in those rooms or used other sources for those TV's.
The basic difference between an adaptor or a cable box, as far as I could tell, was that the adaptors didn't provide any function beyong changing channels and sending the signal to the TV. For example there was no On Demand, no DVR service options and the channel/program guide had more limited features than on a regular cable box.
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Powertool: Just saw your problems. I've had this for months now and it really bugs me. It isn't on my main DVR box, just on the companion boxes. I posted a seperate thread on this (http://forums.xfinity.com/t5/X1/Companion-Box-XiD-P-rewind-buffer-reset-problems/td-p/2920314) and apparently it happens with more than one type of companion box. Hope this is corrected.
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@bowgy4 wrote: Kids, thinman. Kids will watch the same episodes a half dozen times before they're tires of it. And then 2 months later they want to watch it again.
Your kids must be older. Younger todlers will watch some shows multiple times a day, every day for long periods of time.
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@Lsimon wrote: FYI - I bought the WD expander, the version on Amazon that is the same but has USB in addition to the SATA and it works great. But a relative told me they tried basic ESATA drive they had around the house and it worked fine. So I ordered the cheapest ESATA enclosure I could find, about $16 on Amazon, to try a second DVR in the house. I tried it both with an old 1.5TB drive and a 500MB drive that I had around the house from past PC upgrades and both worked just fine. I know Comcast doesn't officially support these but if you're willing to give it a try without their support it is a good deal if you already have some old drives around the house. If you have to buy a drive for the enclosure it probably isn't worth it. Also - I have no idea if the 1.5TB drive is working at full capacity or if it is limited to the 1TB limit that I've seen mentioned in various posts on this forum and elsewhere. The only issue I have with the old drive in the cheap ESATA enclosure is that it is a little noisier, and runs a little hotter, than the WD DVR expander drive. Wanted to report my experiances with the "other" drives. I disconnected the one in the bedroom as it was a bit noisey overnight and the shelf it was on echoed the noise. The official WD unit is quite a bit quieter. The second unit has been problematic and we've stopped using it. The whole DVR operation gets a bit sporatic, freezing up from time to time with it. This has given us the additional headache of having lots of recordings that can no longer be accessed because they were recorded on the external hard drive. The offical WD unit has given us no headaches and has been nice and quiet - although we don't use it in a room as quiet as our bedroom at night. Bottom line: I wouldn't bother trying to use an alterntive drive like I reported above to save a few bucks unless you're willing to consider it experimental and ready to deal with it not working properly over time. I can't say what my issue was but it definitely isn't going as well as the WD DVR Expander which has been problem free.
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FYI - I bought the WD expander, the version on Amazon that is the same but has USB in addition to the SATA and it works great. But a relative told me they tried basic ESATA drive they had around the house and it worked fine. So I ordered the cheapest ESATA enclosure I could find, about $16 on Amazon, to try a second DVR in the house. I tried it both with an old 1.5TB drive and a 500MB drive that I had around the house from past PC upgrades and both worked just fine. I know Comcast doesn't officially support these but if you're willing to give it a try without their support it is a good deal if you already have some old drives around the house. If you have to buy a drive for the enclosure it probably isn't worth it. Also - I have no idea if the 1.5TB drive is working at full capacity or if it is limited to the 1TB limit that I've seen mentioned in various posts on this forum and elsewhere. The only issue I have with the old drive in the cheap ESATA enclosure is that it is a little noisier, and runs a little hotter, than the WD DVR expander drive.
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@ComcastTeds wrote: All areas of Illinois and Indiana should now be good to go with the automatic activation of the e-SATA port for external hard drive use Thanks again for your patience. Got my drive on Tuesday and plugged it in and it immediately came up with a message on the TV to OK formatting the drive. Not countring the time it took to take it out of the box or manuver behind the TV the entire setup took just a minuite or two. I bought the WD version on Amazon which another thread indicated should work. My son who lives down state had an unused ESATA external enclose with an older hard drive and just tried that and it worked fine as well.
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I'm anxiously awaiting September 2 confirmation that the external drive capability is functional in my area in the Chicago suburbs. When I first started looking into ways to get more DVR space earlier this year I learned about X1 and was very interested. I almost upgraded on the phone when I heard about it but while trying to get a simple answer about a capacity question I was cut off twice in phone calls with Comcast, transferred to the wrong department and then ran out of patience with phone calls. I decided to research it on my own and discovered the hundreds of posts in the equipment forum on this web site which describe the huge number of continuing X1 problems. I'd strongly recommend anyone considering X1 to look there first to see what they might be getting into. I'd love to switch to X1 if it was more stable, but right now I just don't see any benefit other than the anyroom and a small increase in storage over what I have now. I don't want to start dealing with any DVR problems as I just want it to work. So I'll hold off and wait for the X1 to get more stable and in the mean time get my expander drive as soon as the capability is turned on in Illinois.
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